Speaker 1: Really now, really.
Speaker 2: Really really hello, and welcome to really No Really with Jason,
Speaker 2: Alexander and Peter Tilden, who want you to know that
Speaker 2: subscribing to our show would make a perfect holiday gift.
Speaker 3: Coincidentally enough, this episode is.
Speaker 4: All about the holidays and why so many families celebrate
Speaker 4: with extremely odd and bizarre holiday traditions. Perhaps the most
Speaker 4: famous bizarre holiday tradition is the celebration of Festivus from
Speaker 4: the television show Seinfeld, with which I believe Jason has
Speaker 4: some sort of passing acquaintance. The actual Festivus was created
Speaker 4: by Seinfeld writer Dan O'Keefe's father, and today Dan speaks
Speaker 4: about the true origin of the Festivus poll, the annual
Speaker 4: airing of grievances and the demonstration of feats of strength.
Speaker 4: He also reveals the many horrors of the real life celebration.
Speaker 3: So happy holidays, and here's Jason than Peter.
Speaker 5: It's hard to believe that the year has passed since
Speaker 5: our last gathering before.
Speaker 3: The Old Fire plaka Minora whatever anybody else, And this
Speaker 3: is our annual holiday episode, which is our Festivus episode
Speaker 3: because of course of Seinfeld, and we got Dan O'Keeffe
Speaker 3: on Dan if you didn't hear it last year, Dane O'Keefe,
Speaker 3: his family actually is the family that his.
Speaker 5: Father created the Festivus holiday, which for Dan was not
Speaker 5: a happy occasion.
Speaker 3: No, and you'll find out why in just a moment.
Speaker 5: And he when Dan was a writer on Seinfeld, he
Speaker 5: happened to mention it in the writer's room and that
Speaker 5: was not a thing you do unless you want. He
Speaker 5: was not initially thrilled that the other writers went, oh,
Speaker 5: this is a thing, but it is his his true
Speaker 5: life family celebration was the genesis of our Festivus.
Speaker 3: But not identical to what they're doing and bizarre, more
Speaker 3: much more bizarre. Yeah, so if they showed that on yeah,
Speaker 3: I don't think it would be as funny. When was
Speaker 3: the first twenty years ago? Did the first episode are?
Speaker 3: I couldn't, but people celebrated people by pauls.
Speaker 5: I mean we did the show basically from ninety to
Speaker 5: ninety nine, so it's about halfway through.
Speaker 3: So maybe it's amazing how many it's amazing how many
Speaker 3: years it took off.
Speaker 5: Ben and Jerry's made an ice cream for it. I
Speaker 5: mean it it is, it is huge. It's a it's
Speaker 5: a celebrated.
Speaker 3: And by the way, as I recall, in this episode,
Speaker 3: we discussed that too, why it became huge, and why
Speaker 3: people create stuff for their family, whether it's bizarre or not,
Speaker 3: whether the foods they eat or things they choose a
Speaker 3: holiday time, it actually creates the culture of that family.
Speaker 5: Well, we for instance, in the Alexander family, we have
Speaker 5: Thanksgiving and then the next day it's called the Turkey Games,
Speaker 5: where we invite my daughter in law's family over since
Speaker 5: they're in town anyway, and we have like a little
Speaker 5: Olympics of silly things, and there's a there's little statues
Speaker 5: that you win for the events, and then we eat
Speaker 5: all the left effisodes.
Speaker 3: But and that becomes your family culture. I mean, it's
Speaker 3: more than just stilly in things. It's about getting together
Speaker 3: and doing it. Remember when we are creating all that
Speaker 3: kinds of stuff. So a lot of families are bizarre
Speaker 3: family cultures. A lot of families have chosen not to
Speaker 3: do the Christmas or Hanka thing or Kwanza because they
Speaker 3: like Festivus. So let's get into it. And then we've
Speaker 3: got an additional bonus, a little surprise at the very end.
Speaker 3: Something brand every year, we're going to tack on something
Speaker 3: new and important, and we've got a very huge talent
Speaker 3: at the end of this episode who has done a
Speaker 3: song for us. So you I think you want to
Speaker 3: go to hang around for this, but right now, in.
Speaker 5: The meantime, let's look back and remember with Dan O'Keefe
Speaker 5: our festival, the origins of festivalus go. It's holiday time
Speaker 5: and as you know, I am associated with a particular holiday.
Speaker 5: But what's interesting and are really that kicks it off
Speaker 5: is you. You shared with me that your research has
Speaker 5: shown that over twenty percent of people, over twenty percent
Speaker 5: of people say that their families have bizarre.
Speaker 3: Bizarre, unique holiday traditions, traditions, right, So.
Speaker 5: That led us to of course the most holiday, that
Speaker 5: is the most famous and the most bizarre, is made
Speaker 5: famous on my former show Seinfeld is Christmas.
Speaker 3: There's Honka.
Speaker 5: That's Festive Us, the festival for the rest of Us,
Speaker 5: which was an actual holiday created by the father of
Speaker 5: the man who authored the episode, and that man is,
Speaker 5: of course, mister Dan O'Keefe's here with us today. Dan's
Speaker 5: a producer and a writer known for a variety of
Speaker 5: things Beavis and butt Head, Space Force, Veep, Silicon Valley
Speaker 5: Drew Carrie Show, and of course, most notably our Festivus
Speaker 5: episode on Seinfeld and I am so delighted, even though
Speaker 5: well I haven't seen a talk do in probably twenty years.
Speaker 3: Dan, welcome to the show, sir.
Speaker 6: Thank you, Jason. I'm flattered to me invited on And
Speaker 6: to be fair, that was kind of close to the
Speaker 6: festivus of it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, people who do not know the argent, we'll find
Speaker 3: out the argent. I did laugh when I that you
Speaker 3: were actually invited on different times to people's houses over
Speaker 3: the holidays who were actually observing a form of festivus
Speaker 3: and didn't know that it was from your family.
Speaker 6: That has happened on a number of occasions. I am
Speaker 6: so far unanimous in my streak of saying no thank you.
Speaker 6: I'm sure I hope they had a lovely time, but wow, wow, yeah,
Speaker 6: that's happened a number of times.
Speaker 3: Wow. So the origin is not what people think right
Speaker 3: the way we laid it out on the show.
Speaker 5: I guess the origins of those ideas may be from
Speaker 5: what you and your dad to your family created. But
Speaker 5: what can you walk us through for people that don't
Speaker 5: know what your organic Festivus was?
Speaker 6: My organic Festivus was a living hell on earth that
Speaker 6: appeared at random throughout the year at an unspecified date.
Speaker 6: It didn't have It wasn't really December twenty thirty. It
Speaker 6: was whenever my father felt like it. One year there
Speaker 6: were none, one year there were two. And it arose
Speaker 6: out of the fact that my dad was basically a
Speaker 6: more feral Frank Costanza who spent thirty forty fifty years
Speaker 6: desperately trying to turn himself into Fraser Crane. He escaped
Speaker 6: from Jersey the Greenville ward of Jersey City, which at
Speaker 6: the time was sort of like a you know, a Southey.
Speaker 6: And he was the first in his family to go
Speaker 6: to college, and I think one of the first to
Speaker 6: finish high school, and got rid of his accident at
Speaker 6: Oxford and just decided to wash the stink of Jersey
Speaker 6: off himself with excessive amounts of education, including an obsession
Speaker 6: with the plays of Samuel Beckett who Wow, There's a lot,
Speaker 6: There's a lot, Wow Wow. Including and on his first
Speaker 6: date with my mother, he lent her a copy of
Speaker 6: the play Craps Last Tape. Now, when the play Craps
Speaker 6: Last Tape, it's an old man listening to you're a
Speaker 6: song and dance man.
Speaker 3: You're you're talking my language. Go ahead.
Speaker 6: An old man listening to tape recordings of a slightly
Speaker 6: younger man listening to recordings of a slightly younger man.
Speaker 6: So the original Festivus was indeed an airing of grievances,
Speaker 6: but it was an area of grievances in which my
Speaker 6: brothers and I were made to listen to recordings of
Speaker 6: my father complaining the year before, while listening to recordings
Speaker 6: of my father complaining the year before, and so on
Speaker 6: and so on in a series of Russian nesting dolls.
Speaker 6: It was occasionally exhilarating. Most often there was There was
Speaker 6: a tremendous amount of liquor involved. I mean it was
Speaker 6: just in my Later in my life, my dad lost
Speaker 6: fifty five pounds by switching to light beer and started
Speaker 6: wearing suits from the fifties that fit him again. And
Speaker 6: it was like he dressed like Kramer. He was wearing
Speaker 6: these like ancient hipster vintage jobs. It was crazy, And
Speaker 6: it was my father drunkenly complaining into a tape recorder
Speaker 6: about the corrosive effect of internal reader's digest politics, about
Speaker 6: how we had disappointed him during the year about how
Speaker 6: my mother did not keep a clean house, about how
Speaker 6: his relatives were awful, which was actually kind of you know,
Speaker 6: not always incorrect. There was a lot of strange music
Speaker 6: that was played. He played this record containing songs of
Speaker 6: the Irish Republican Army, but also weird the strange novelty
Speaker 6: pop records from Germany and Italy from like the forties, fifties,
Speaker 6: and sixties. They actually there's an Italian version of Alvin
Speaker 6: and the Chipmunks. That's the most terrifying thing I've ever
Speaker 6: heard in my life. The Chipmunks and the Irish rebels
Speaker 6: being hanged by the British, and the strange German accordion
Speaker 6: stuff and all over that a litany of complaints, and
Speaker 6: then he would encourage us to complain ourselves, and then
Speaker 6: when we complained too much, you would complain that we
Speaker 6: were complaining too much. It was it was a combination
Speaker 6: of alcoholism and borderline child endangerment that should have had
Speaker 6: the New York States takes away and raised us in
Speaker 6: a facility, But at the time, you know, child Protective
Speaker 6: Services just was not not up this enough in the
Speaker 6: New York area. So, uh, there you have it.
Speaker 3: So wait, that's your family. You brother would cry, You
Speaker 3: would cry, I mean it was. It was horrifying. And
Speaker 3: also had a clock nailed in a bag to the
Speaker 3: wall rather than a Paul right best of his.
Speaker 6: Poll is a By the way, I should mention I
Speaker 6: didn't author the entire episode. I wrote it along with
Speaker 6: Jeff Schaffer and aleck Berg, who arguably wrote some of
Speaker 6: the better stuff. But the symbol is not a pole.
Speaker 6: That was a Shaefer joke. The real symbol of the
Speaker 6: holiday was my father took an ancient rusted alarm clock,
Speaker 6: put it in like a burlapsed sack, and then nailed
Speaker 6: it to the wall. And I don't know why he
Speaker 6: never told you represent He would always say the same thing,
Speaker 6: that's not for you to know. And I don't know
Speaker 6: what it means, and I still to this day, and
Speaker 6: something about the evanescence of time, of life, of youth.
Speaker 6: I don't know. I know that it was a wedding
Speaker 6: present that he and my mom got, so maybe it's
Speaker 6: some think about their marriage. I don't even want to know.
Speaker 6: But oh there was. By the way, another symbol of
Speaker 6: Festivus was a sign hand letter that read fascism that
Speaker 6: my father would tape to the wall. He wouldn't nail
Speaker 6: that to the wall. But the thing is that sign
Speaker 6: also came out sometimes at Thanksgiving and sometimes at christ Wow.
Speaker 3: Wow, So I read that you said your dad was
Speaker 3: an undiagnosed bipolar also at the time.
Speaker 6: Was this at least so was this.
Speaker 3: Was there joy ever? Or was this always the storm
Speaker 3: that was brewing underneath for your dad?
Speaker 6: It was incredibly charismatic and brilliant. Brilliant man. I mean
Speaker 6: the New York Times compared his book, his thousand page
Speaker 6: unified field Theory of Anthropology, psychology and sociology. He could
Speaker 6: compare it to Mark Starwin and Freud in their review,
Speaker 6: although not only people in Japan read it, but for
Speaker 6: some reason. But yeah, it was terrifying, but there were
Speaker 6: it was interspersed with moments of joy. He was very funny.
Speaker 6: He made it funny while it was happening. But for
Speaker 6: the most part it was It was mostly like they say,
Speaker 6: war is mostly boring, with moments of terror, but the
Speaker 6: occasionally it's fun damn.
Speaker 3: And you didn't want this out there that the story
Speaker 3: is your brother Mark right still de means accidentally.
Speaker 6: We came to the realization very young. If you go
Speaker 6: to school, elementary school and say, hey, we had festivusts
Speaker 6: this weekend. When when did you have it? People will
Speaker 6: look at you and say excuse me, and it will
Speaker 6: you will immediately be put on a more rigorous beating schedule.
Speaker 6: So we had a bowet of silence that was semi
Speaker 6: formally taken and I had literally blocked it out of
Speaker 6: my mind. And then Mark goes and opens his yap
Speaker 6: at a party that Jeff Jay for, aleck Berg, Dave Mandel,
Speaker 6: some of the executive producers along with Jerry the final
Speaker 6: season of the show. A party they were at and
Speaker 6: they were immediately, excuse me, I want to hear.
Speaker 3: More about this.
Speaker 6: So then I was lured to a diner called Swingers
Speaker 6: On on Beverly and they sort of pinned me down
Speaker 6: in a booth. They sat, you know, around me, so
Speaker 6: I couldn't get out out, and they said we want
Speaker 6: to talk about Festivus and I actually hadn't thought about
Speaker 6: it in years for a reason. I was like, oh,
Speaker 6: how did you hear about that? I'm really sorry you
Speaker 6: had to take up those brain cells with that information.
Speaker 6: And they're like, no, no, we want to put it
Speaker 6: on the show, and I said, no, you really really don't.
Speaker 6: You're making a terrible mistake.
Speaker 3: This show is a perfect thing.
Speaker 6: This is the greatest common the history of television. And
Speaker 6: you want to essentially smear feces on it. You're mad,
Speaker 6: You're mad. Jeff Schaffer, Alec Berg, Dave Mandel. But you know,
Speaker 6: as it turned out, I was dead wrong. Jerry wanted
Speaker 6: to do it, and they were completely right. Now there
Speaker 6: was it turns out there was a version that was
Speaker 6: consumable by a mass audience. I thought that it would
Speaker 6: lead to not good things.
Speaker 5: But and the stuff that was created for the for
Speaker 5: the television version of Festivus, that was all. That was
Speaker 5: all sort of a mutual mind mold right, the whole
Speaker 5: the feats of strength, the airing of grievance is.
Speaker 6: The tereral negativity around it, the Georgia attitude toward it
Speaker 6: is taken from reality because they doesn't want to talk
Speaker 6: about it. What runs when his father brings it up.
Speaker 6: But the specifics of it did change. Now, the airing
Speaker 6: of grievances was the central tenet of the original. Yes,
Speaker 6: but and though there was always the implicit threat of
Speaker 6: violence from my father, there was not actually a wrestling
Speaker 6: of parental wrestling thing. Nor was there a poll that
Speaker 6: did come out of the rest the wait ratio with
Speaker 6: an alec Berg joke. The poll itself was with Schaeffer.
Speaker 6: I think the the twenty third to get a to
Speaker 6: get a head start on Christmas. I think that was Dave.
Speaker 6: People just filled in the blanks to put together a
Speaker 6: more palatable version of this, you know, remake of the
Speaker 6: Mosquito Coast that I lived.
Speaker 3: And do you remember it? So? Do you remember? And
Speaker 3: we want to get into what it felt like writing
Speaker 3: in the writer's room for Signfel, etc. But do you
Speaker 3: remember being there when they shot that episode? What? What?
Speaker 3: What went through your head? And what you thought emotionally
Speaker 3: watching this? What was that weak like for you?
Speaker 6: You know, here we are, It was like an out
Speaker 6: of body experience. And I remember thinking something that I
Speaker 6: hadn't thought since I left for college, which is my
Speaker 6: father might actually physically murder me over this and so
Speaker 6: and I couldn't tell if it was good or not,
Speaker 6: Like it's one of the things where you're right, And
Speaker 6: obviously that happens in shows that are not taken partially
Speaker 6: from your childhood. But in that case, what I was
Speaker 6: hoping was the following I was hoping that. I was
Speaker 6: hoping that Festivus would be left on the editing room floor.
Speaker 6: I thought, look, we have there's a Jerry story, a
Speaker 6: George's story, a Cramer story, and a Laine's story. This
Speaker 6: is a Frank story, this is a fifth story. There's
Speaker 6: no way it'll survive the editing process. So I comforted
Speaker 6: myself by saying, it'll.
Speaker 3: All be fine.
Speaker 6: They're just gonna snip it around the edges and then
Speaker 6: they'll they'll come to their senses. They'll come to their senses.
Speaker 6: And they realized, no, we don't want to do this
Speaker 6: to the show. The show does not deserve this, America
Speaker 6: does not deserve this. But as it turned out, somehow
Speaker 6: they edited thirteen and a half minutes out of it.
Speaker 6: That that's how long it was, and they need to
Speaker 6: actually fit together in a way that made sense and
Speaker 6: was watchable. And I've was surprised. And it's a testament
Speaker 6: to the editors and to the talent of the gentleman
Speaker 6: I mentioned, and Jerry's vision steering the show and as
Speaker 6: always and and uh oh man, if you remember shooting
Speaker 6: that scene the festive dinners.
Speaker 3: Around the table. What I remember vividly.
Speaker 5: I think there's probably I think this is available online
Speaker 5: on bloopers, but I can't remember the reason why. But
Speaker 5: Julia looked pretty draggled by the time she got to
Speaker 5: the table, I think, like her hair was all matted down, and.
Speaker 6: It was to parallel the girl who looked good in
Speaker 6: One Life exactly.
Speaker 5: And there was this kind of unsavory looking guy who
Speaker 5: was hitting on her at the table and he said
Speaker 5: something about you look great, and in total Julia Elaine fashion,
Speaker 5: she goes, huh, thanks. She was like hell as much
Speaker 5: as Julia could ever look like hel and she couldn't
Speaker 5: get through it.
Speaker 3: She could.
Speaker 5: The guy's face was so great. He was one of
Speaker 5: those great characters that they always found. And he did
Speaker 5: it perfectly. He did it like right on the edge
Speaker 5: of you know, you know, child rapist. And it was
Speaker 5: she just and that and we did take after take
Speaker 5: and then then you know, God rest them. Jerry Stiller
Speaker 5: would get up and start going, I got a lot
Speaker 5: of problems with your papa, and that we were That
Speaker 5: was it, we were done.
Speaker 6: I remember a couple of things. First of all, the
Speaker 6: guy you're talking about, he he was a he did
Speaker 6: a him all access show in New York City, I
Speaker 6: think out of Brooklyn, in which he reviewed pornography. He
Speaker 6: was an actual like like, he was exactly who you
Speaker 6: think he would be, and he played that perfectly. I
Speaker 6: remember another thing which at the beginning, I remember, I
Speaker 6: remember all of you breaking everybody. Yeah, but at the
Speaker 6: very beginning, I think Julius said somebody to Jerry, like,
Speaker 6: we get this in one take, I'll give you a
Speaker 6: million dollars something like that, and needless to say, it
Speaker 6: took eight hours.
Speaker 5: She personally made sure that we weren't going to get
Speaker 5: an I think I think it took eight hours, yeah, wow,
Speaker 5: to get the table.
Speaker 3: And I think that the guy that we're talking about,
Speaker 3: the kind of you know, borderline.
Speaker 6: Personality Colin's sleazy friend.
Speaker 5: I think the guy who played his cohort on the
Speaker 5: show turned out to be Tracy LED's esteemed actor author employer.
Speaker 3: Putt surprise, So let me ask you a big question
Speaker 3: to clear something up that's been out there forever. So
Speaker 3: when people celebrate festivals, they try and emulate the meal,
Speaker 3: but nobody can actually figure out there are no clear shot.
Speaker 3: People tried to freeze frame it and whatever. So I've
Speaker 3: read about this portrayal. They're trying to figure it out.
Speaker 3: So what they do is they get Bopka from one episode,
Speaker 3: they get bagels from their marbles. But there are reports
Speaker 3: that there was let us with what looked to be
Speaker 3: meal out on it on the table. What was do
Speaker 3: you do you? Does anybody know what the meal was
Speaker 3: in the sign phone.
Speaker 6: Episode on the show. I'm pretty sure it was meat loaf. Yeah,
Speaker 6: cleared it up for every there was a there was
Speaker 6: a disagreeable, suspect looking meat loaf that was carved up
Speaker 6: before the scene and put on everyone's plate.
Speaker 3: There you go, I think, yeah, because nobody can identify
Speaker 3: for sure when they celebrate festivals at home, so they
Speaker 3: emulate by by by grabbing from different episodes. Like I said,
Speaker 3: the Bopka, et cetera for the meal. But you just
Speaker 3: cleaned it up. Now people who have festiv it's meat
Speaker 3: loaf on lettuce. Oh my god, I.
Speaker 6: Mean the real thing was it was whatever the whatever
Speaker 6: we were having for dinner. It was usually you know,
Speaker 6: it was a holiday, So my mom made like a
Speaker 6: chicken or something.
Speaker 3: But what was the fallout from the episode within your family?
Speaker 6: My mom was real afraid to tell me Dad. Uh,
Speaker 6: Mark thought it was hilarious because he was not going
Speaker 6: to get hit by any of the bullback. It was
Speaker 6: all falled on me. My other brother didn't want any
Speaker 6: part of it. Uh, And then it came out and
Speaker 6: I had to tell my dad. At first he didn't understand,
Speaker 6: and then he got real mad like like like yeah,
Speaker 6: like we're very briefly like and he by that point
Speaker 6: he was slowing down. There wasn't so much of the
Speaker 6: throwing stuff mad level left, but he was very exercised.
Speaker 6: But then he saw it and he kind of liked it.
Speaker 6: And then people, you know, the reviews started coming. He
Speaker 6: started and then he immediately became insufferably smug and thought
Speaker 6: that that episode retroactively justified every poor choice he'd never
Speaker 6: made his entire life. He was, Oh, he was thrilled.
Speaker 6: He was over the moon. He was over the moon.
Speaker 3: So you would tell people, I'm thest shut him up.
Speaker 6: Ben and Jerry's made uh like a flavor. It was
Speaker 6: like burnt shirt caramel and Christmas Eve type flavors. And Uh.
Speaker 6: They sent a poster and my dad framed it and
Speaker 6: insisted on like hanging on the wall the kitchen in
Speaker 6: a place where it really didn't fit. So he was
Speaker 6: he was for the last do the last decade and
Speaker 6: a half of his life. For more.
Speaker 3: Could not have been prouder. Could Speaking of the ice cream.
Speaker 5: So I just you know, I went online and I
Speaker 5: went to just Amazon and typed in Festivus related things,
Speaker 5: and here's what came up. Lots of poles, you know,
Speaker 5: by a Festivus pole, there's a board game. There were
Speaker 5: fireplace stockings, sweaters, mugs, treo ornaments, playing cards, t shirts,
Speaker 5: refrigerator magnets, and the ice cream flavor.
Speaker 3: Do you ever see anything from any of that? No?
Speaker 6: No, I mean no, no, I mean look, as far
Speaker 6: as I know in the context of the show, the
Speaker 6: copyright to that holiday is owned by Castle Rock Communications
Speaker 6: and they're welcome to it. And as of right now,
Speaker 6: it's an open source holiday. It's entered into the culture,
Speaker 6: which I'm I have mixed emotions about, obviously. But if
Speaker 6: Satanists want to protest against fascism in Florida by putting
Speaker 6: up a display with beer cans and putting the word
Speaker 6: Festivus on it in the Florida State House, which happened, hey.
Speaker 3: Good for you to just go for it was a
Speaker 3: phrase festivus for the rest of us. That was a
Speaker 3: phrase that the family did use, right, And your daddy
Speaker 3: came up with.
Speaker 6: I have these tapes and they're actually in that filing
Speaker 6: cabinet and they were remastered to CDs a long time ago,
Speaker 6: and their tapes from every year, and in nineteen seventy
Speaker 6: six that year, my dad, in the tape recording said
Speaker 6: this is a festist for the rest of us. But
Speaker 6: what he meant by that was for the living as
Speaker 6: opposed to the dead, because that year my grandmother, Jeanette
Speaker 6: Marie O'Connor O'Keeffe, had had a stroke in a supermarket
Speaker 6: in Jersey City and died. We don't pass away in
Speaker 6: my family, we die, and so that was what it meant.
Speaker 6: And I remember that and I sort of spat it
Speaker 6: out without remembering the context. Then by the time it's
Speaker 6: in the script and it's actually working and we're past
Speaker 6: the table, like, oh yeah, actually about my dead grandpa's around, well, I.
Speaker 3: Always thought it was because.
Speaker 5: I actually thought it was true of your family as well,
Speaker 5: But I always thought it was Frank Costanza's. You know,
Speaker 5: he was an atheist, you know, he didn't want to
Speaker 5: play into any of the religiosity. So it was a
Speaker 5: festival for the rest of us, you know who don't.
Speaker 6: Well, the original version was it was those of us
Speaker 6: who were alive as opposed to dead.
Speaker 5: Did your did the family either accept or pervert any
Speaker 5: other holiday? Was Thanksgiving?
Speaker 3: Okay? Was Halloween?
Speaker 6: Halloween?
Speaker 3: Okay? Was?
Speaker 6: I mean? Thanksgiving was weird, but it was recognizably Thanksgiving.
Speaker 6: We celebrated Christmas in a cultural way, no religiosity at all.
Speaker 6: So the answer is no, he didn't pervert any other holidays.
Speaker 6: But that's just wasn't the only made up holiday he had.
Speaker 6: There were weirder ones. Oh tell, that's just wasn't the
Speaker 6: only made up holiday he had. There were weirder ones.
Speaker 3: Oh pray tell, well, this is not this to start.
Speaker 6: Off, You know the A very merry on birthday to
Speaker 6: you from uh Lewis Carroll.
Speaker 3: I am familiar with it, very peripherally.
Speaker 6: Yes, from Alice in Wonderland. Whenever my dad did something
Speaker 6: so drunkenly, violently unacceptable or offensive or horrifying or just
Speaker 6: generally embarrassing that my mom was about to leave him,
Speaker 6: then whichever child was offended against would get an extra
Speaker 6: birthday and that was called an unbirthday, and it was
Speaker 6: sort of a little birthday, but it was still it
Speaker 6: was called an un birthday.
Speaker 3: That was weird, weird.
Speaker 6: It was something called the Polish Hour, and I started
Speaker 6: to explain what the Polish hour was, because he said
Speaker 6: it's time for the Polish shower. What this meant was
Speaker 6: lights were again extinguished. The guy was really into candles.
Speaker 6: I don't know if he didn't have electricity growing up
Speaker 6: or something, But then he made my mother play Chopin's
Speaker 6: Polonaise on the piano, which had not been tuned in
Speaker 6: twenty years, and so it sounded really peculiar, kind of
Speaker 6: like this theme to Halloween when she tried to play it.
Speaker 6: And then he would deliver an off the cuff impromptu
Speaker 6: monologue looking back on this moment from the perspective of
Speaker 6: the future, like thirty years from now, remembering in the
Speaker 6: present what was happening, but referred to the town we
Speaker 6: lived in as the swamp, and it was just him
Speaker 6: pounding huge amounts of alcoholic beverages while reminiscing about things
Speaker 6: that either hadn't happened yet or were happening now as
Speaker 6: if they had happened in the distant past. There was
Speaker 6: definitely a whiff of Beckett of a crap glass tape
Speaker 6: to this too. But he just sat in this ancient
Speaker 6: stained yellow chair chanting this nonsense while my mom was
Speaker 6: forced to play this a piece of piano music on
Speaker 6: an untuned piano.
Speaker 3: Even I said, you would come home and never know
Speaker 3: what was going to happen on any given day.
Speaker 6: Pretty much, I mean we we. Also there were classes
Speaker 6: after class, I mean we received additional schooling in. One
Speaker 6: of them was quantum theory, but this was the late
Speaker 6: nineteen seventies, so they only discovered a few quarks. We
Speaker 6: didn't have a full quark component compliment. Yet, there was
Speaker 6: a whole room of the house filled Florida ceiling with
Speaker 6: books about the Kennedy assassination. So this was what I
Speaker 6: came home, yes, on a daily basis.
Speaker 3: But damn, what's amazing is.
Speaker 7: You know?
Speaker 6: It's amazing amazing. This is something Jerry said after recounting
Speaker 6: one of these anecdotes. I think it was explaining festivals.
Speaker 6: It was a long beat, and then I believe it
Speaker 6: with Jerry said, why are you alive?
Speaker 3: Yeah, but Dane, I was going to go the other way.
Speaker 3: The weird thing is and I know there's alcoholism by
Speaker 3: personally bipolar disorder, but in a weird way, because you're
Speaker 3: so articulate, you know history, you're you're you're aware a
Speaker 3: limited a grasp of quantum that's tough but fair. You're
Speaker 3: exposed to so much, even though it was in a
Speaker 3: bizarre way, went here, you went to Harvard, you ended
Speaker 3: up writing on major shows. So in a weird way,
Speaker 3: your father exposed you to a lot of stuff in
Speaker 3: a bizarre way that you were presented, but you turned
Speaker 3: out taking all of that in some way here, he
Speaker 3: said condescendingly, which means talking about Dan.
Speaker 6: No, it's there's definitely an aspect of that, absolutely sure.
Speaker 5: I mean, I guess to ping pong off of what
Speaker 5: Peter is saying. And I hadn't thought to even get
Speaker 5: into this because it's kind of a heavy question and
Speaker 5: you don't have to answer it.
Speaker 3: But I can't get a.
Speaker 5: Read on whether you feel like I mean, it's easy
Speaker 5: for me to say I loved my dad and I
Speaker 5: miss him and he was a big part of my life.
Speaker 3: Did you have a relationship that you valued with your
Speaker 3: father or was it just too hard to find it?
Speaker 6: I mean, it's complicated, but yeah, absolutely, I love my father.
Speaker 6: He was that was the It would have been easy
Speaker 6: if he had been monstrous and unlovable, but he was
Speaker 6: incredibly charismatic and brilliant and it was talking his way
Speaker 6: into or out of anything. So yeah, actually in the
Speaker 6: last like particularly the last ten years of his life. Actually,
Speaker 6: you know, arguably since the festest episode came out, we
Speaker 6: were you know, as close as you can get to
Speaker 6: someone that damage.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, wow. And the other thing that's weird is
Speaker 3: estensibly your bizarre holiday has been twenty seven years later,
Speaker 3: it still persists and it has become like for families
Speaker 3: that do it, it has become part of their culture.
Speaker 3: On our hip, we're doing a Festivus thing, it's celebratory.
Speaker 5: I mean, no one that I know that that you know,
Speaker 5: fools around with Festivus is doing it as anything other
Speaker 5: than a joy, fun unique, you know, something that.
Speaker 3: They look forward to, and it identifies that family as hey,
Speaker 3: we're fine, we're quirking, we're different. And they've taken the
Speaker 3: feats of strength and they do I read, they do weightlifting,
Speaker 3: they do all kinds of racing. They've taken it morphed
Speaker 3: it into their family's own and it's pure joy for people.
Speaker 6: It's the watching videos of it, and you're absolutely right,
Speaker 6: it's it's joyful. And so in retrospect, not only were
Speaker 6: Jerry and Dave and Jeff and Alec right, they they
Speaker 6: sort of retro they sort of redeemed that unpleasant morasses
Speaker 6: of memory because now this thing that would have been
Speaker 6: something that you know, I tried to you know, uh
Speaker 6: work through therapy, is something that now you know, literally
Speaker 6: dozens of people around the country are having a good
Speaker 6: time with.
Speaker 3: It.
Speaker 6: Yeah, so so they certainly a lot of the poison
Speaker 6: has been taken out of it by by it being
Speaker 6: now something that it's just just so strange that like
Speaker 6: a super like possibly one of the weirdest parts of
Speaker 6: a very strange childhood is now Yeah, it's a word.
Speaker 6: It's the word that my dad made up is now
Speaker 6: out there.
Speaker 3: That's a wonderful thing. And David, you have some insight
Speaker 3: because people are so fascinated still with Sient Fall Notts
Speaker 3: on Netflix and it's just the next generation watches.
Speaker 6: Well, actually, I would be I would be remiss if
Speaker 6: I didn't say it was it was just the honor
Speaker 6: of my life. It was every day there with a joy.
Speaker 6: It was hard work. It was unbelievably hard work, as
Speaker 6: you remember, particularly that season when I did not have
Speaker 6: the benefit of working with with mister David. But uh, yeah,
Speaker 6: it was such a pleasure to work with you on
Speaker 6: that Jason.
Speaker 3: Thank you brother. I right back at you and I
Speaker 3: it was it was it was just one of those.
Speaker 3: But I was going to ask me, what was the
Speaker 3: writers What did it feel like. I've been in writers
Speaker 3: rooms and it gets very competitive. People don't want to
Speaker 3: laugh at your joke. Everybody's trying to please the showrunner
Speaker 3: to figure out what's in there. Had I've been in
Speaker 3: those kinds of writers rooms, and I've been in kind
Speaker 3: of writers rooms where it's just a lot of fun,
Speaker 3: where people are just making everybody laugh and it's just
Speaker 3: a collective joy to do. What was it. What was
Speaker 3: your experience in the writer's room? It was a very
Speaker 3: competitive or.
Speaker 6: It was, yeah, but everyone took it very seriously. This
Speaker 6: is the greatest TV comedy of all time, and we
Speaker 6: are tasked with doing this without one of the creators,
Speaker 6: and we better get it right because it's it's a
Speaker 6: It would be a crime and a disgrace if we didn't. So, yeah,
Speaker 6: that people, it was unbelievably fun.
Speaker 3: It was uh.
Speaker 6: Making Jerry Seinfeld laugh in the room is uh you know,
Speaker 6: like particularly one time when he almost Loqui came out
Speaker 6: of notice, like the birth of my son was nice.
Speaker 6: That was fun.
Speaker 3: I enjoyed it.
Speaker 6: But I got to say seeing Jerry laugh and that
Speaker 6: that was the rappiest moment of my l It was
Speaker 6: a joy. It was another joy. Now were there times
Speaker 6: that people possibly almost came to blows, Yes, because they
Speaker 6: disagreed about the the These were very, very talented. I
Speaker 6: mean you had Jennifer Crittenden, who I've worked with since then.
Speaker 6: It was a genius, and Alec and Jeff and Dave
Speaker 6: who have together created and run some of the greatest
Speaker 6: comedies of the last twenty years. And Spike Ferston. I mean,
Speaker 6: these were all people at the absolute top of their game,
Speaker 6: and everyone cared very much about getting it right and
Speaker 6: not just getting it right and making it as good
Speaker 6: as it could possibly be. So most of the time
Speaker 6: people were laughing so hard that your voice was horsed
Speaker 6: by the end of the day. But yeah, sometimes there
Speaker 6: were very loud disagreements and Jerry would would you know,
Speaker 6: have to tamp it down?
Speaker 3: And did an episode start with an idea, with an
Speaker 3: overall idea or because it was a sitcom, we had
Speaker 3: to have four intersecting stories, which was unique. Did you
Speaker 3: start with with with modular Hey, that may work better
Speaker 3: with this on this episode and moving stuff around?
Speaker 6: Absolutely, that sometimes did happen, But most of the time
Speaker 6: you just went into a room with Jerry and Jeff
Speaker 6: and Alick and Dave and you ran a whole bunch
Speaker 6: of ideas, ideas for a capsule story that could be
Speaker 6: a George story. I got a freelance. My first episode
Speaker 6: was season eight on the Pothole, which was Jerry not
Speaker 6: to his girlfriend's toothbrush and the toilet and then can't
Speaker 6: tell her and she's already brushed her teeth, which actually
Speaker 6: happened to my now wife and you when we lived
Speaker 6: in New York on the Upper West Side, and I
Speaker 6: had to tell her for literally years and years, I
Speaker 6: just thought of that that was what that wasn't a
Speaker 6: real thing, that was like a marvel. And then later
Speaker 6: once once she was already pregnant, she's nowhere for her
Speaker 6: to go, I said, yeah, you know, that really happened.
Speaker 6: I threw your tooth. I threw the toothbrush away, and
Speaker 6: I subbed it out when it was too late. Yeah,
Speaker 6: you brush your teeth of the toilet water. So you'd
Speaker 6: throw stories out of them like that and they'd approve.
Speaker 6: And once you go out of Jerry, George and Elne
Speaker 6: and A. Cramer proved, then you were set off to
Speaker 6: outline it. And it was a very intricate structure of
Speaker 6: there were big rooms for punch up because all the writers,
Speaker 6: and then there were very small rooms, which is just
Speaker 6: one person trying to put together that episode they were
Speaker 6: going to write and getting the stories approved by the
Speaker 6: the top people. And then there were rewrite rooms for
Speaker 6: somewhere in the middle, and then there were post table
Speaker 6: punch up sessions, which was again every one one. So
Speaker 6: it was incredibly well structured, and it had to be
Speaker 6: because you know, I remember at the beginning of production
Speaker 6: Schaeffer said, Okay, uh, nobody's uh, nobody make any plans
Speaker 6: for the weekend. And someone said what weekend? He said,
Speaker 6: all weekends. It was a little uh. And he was
Speaker 6: damn he was correct, because right, yes, and and that's
Speaker 6: because the Jeff and Allen were and Dave were remarkably
Speaker 6: talented show runners have continued to be, but the tone
Speaker 6: was set by Jerry. Because this his work ethic continues
Speaker 6: to blow me away to this day. I remember very
Speaker 6: specifically we had a nine am rewrite on a Sunday
Speaker 6: and I got there a little early by accident, and
Speaker 6: he was there at eight forty five pacing because he
Speaker 6: wanted to get the work done and brilliant obviously brilliant, funny.
Speaker 6: You can't say enough about that. But he also doesn't
Speaker 6: get credit for being John Starks, for just working harder
Speaker 6: than any comic in the history of comics.
Speaker 3: Yeah, being the show and had at that then learn
Speaker 3: and do and and delivery. It is said, great to
Speaker 3: see you. I wish you.
Speaker 5: This is our holiday show, so happy holidays to you
Speaker 5: and your family.
Speaker 3: And uh and I am.
Speaker 5: I am truly delighted to see you. And it makes
Speaker 5: me feel like we should just sit sometime and catch up.
Speaker 5: But I feel that way about our whole group.
Speaker 6: But I love that anytime you just tell me where,
Speaker 6: I'll even go to the valley.
Speaker 3: I love that, WHOA said, even it's the assumption that
Speaker 3: I did by what's going to happen? You call and said,
Speaker 3: let's meet it in the valley. Who was just say
Speaker 3: I was just saying that. I was just saying that
Speaker 3: on the podcast, Dan, thank you my friends. So wasn't
Speaker 3: that lovely? Wasn't that a little trip down memory lane
Speaker 3: to find out how the holiday began? And then with
Speaker 3: child abuse? And hell boy, I just still you look
Speaker 3: at Dan and he's a great guy. Yeah. The fact
Speaker 3: that he revealed that in the writer's room and now
Speaker 3: he's got to live with every year.
Speaker 5: All of this thing that tortured him as a child
Speaker 5: is now is international mind the world. Yeah, amazing. So
Speaker 5: you've you've arranged a little treat for me as well
Speaker 5: as the listeners. Because I was not a part of
Speaker 5: your you were busy off doing doing theater and stuff
Speaker 5: like that. I just thought it would be really cool.
Speaker 3: We have such a talented guy that we met here,
Speaker 3: Sonny Promoton, and he works with how I'm into how
Speaker 3: I kind of well, I hate to stay discovered you,
Speaker 3: but you signing in the Black Pack. We were exposed
Speaker 3: to them here where we record and blown away by
Speaker 3: the talent.
Speaker 5: The voice, the musicianship, and you know, it's it's it's
Speaker 5: one of those things, especially in this town.
Speaker 3: All this guy's great, all, this guy's faby and.
Speaker 5: We were blown away. I'm telling you how he said, yeah,
Speaker 5: they're my house band, and I'm going, okay, howie, whatever
Speaker 5: you need like a house What are you doing when
Speaker 5: you need a house band? You guys started playing, and
Speaker 5: we were like, what the hell is going on in
Speaker 5: that little corner over there?
Speaker 3: There's how many is four players?
Speaker 8: We actually our whole band is up to like eight players,
Speaker 8: but we change in and out. We changed formats and
Speaker 8: different people. But when we're here, we're usually about five people.
Speaker 8: But you know, our real band, we've we've got a
Speaker 8: lot of people.
Speaker 3: All I can tell you is they're putting out.
Speaker 5: Sound and a lot of the stuff you guys do
Speaker 5: are covers of things, but you totally changed the feel
Speaker 5: and the vibe and the groove and the certainly the
Speaker 5: musicality of it all.
Speaker 3: And it feels like, since we never see them.
Speaker 5: Rehearse, we go, hey, play a blivola demama in seven
Speaker 5: and g you know, and.
Speaker 3: So what's background? When did you start playing?
Speaker 8: Okay, I really I started playing piano when I was sixteen.
Speaker 8: At one point I had such hard time, I got
Speaker 8: really depressed and and I just kind of was wandering
Speaker 8: around and walking around the city, and I would hear
Speaker 8: something in my ear. I could hear just some notes
Speaker 8: and some different noises, right, I said, Hell, why don't
Speaker 8: you go find a piano somewhere and see if I
Speaker 8: can figure something out. I don't know, and I sat
Speaker 8: down and I started to tinker. Within fifteen minutes, I
Speaker 8: wrote my first song and changed my life. And then
Speaker 8: a year later I had over three hundred songs.
Speaker 3: Did you know you had the ability to play?
Speaker 6: I did not know.
Speaker 3: And was it just something that was in you? Who
Speaker 3: taught your chorus.
Speaker 6: Already taught me chords? Nobody did.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 8: I looked at the piano and it just made sense
Speaker 8: to me. I played a little bit here and there,
Speaker 8: and I was like, oh, okay, this is relative, this
Speaker 8: makes sense. I didn't know the term for it. I
Speaker 8: didn't understand what it was. I would just play the
Speaker 8: notes and the sound. I knew that the sounds worked together.
Speaker 8: I didn't have any clue. I didn't have any theory
Speaker 8: behind it at all, and I just started to write music.
Speaker 3: And I we have a.
Speaker 5: Only some much story in that I learned music on flute,
Speaker 5: so I had heavy braces.
Speaker 3: In my third grade, you had to take an instrument
Speaker 3: we didn't have. I didn't have a piano.
Speaker 5: My parents refuse to let me play drums, so for me,
Speaker 5: I couldn't put anything in or press against my mouth.
Speaker 5: So I couldn't do anything that needed a trumpet's Armbisher right,
Speaker 5: I couldn't put a reed instrument in my mouth because
Speaker 5: of the dender, and so I was down to violin
Speaker 5: or flute. And I was already the subject of bullying.
Speaker 5: So I went, which one can I run with faster?
Speaker 5: You know, to get away from these guys. So I
Speaker 5: learned music on flute, but I wanted to learn piano.
Speaker 5: Now the difference between you and me is I got
Speaker 5: a basic book on music theory, which said, here's what
Speaker 5: makes a major cord, here's what makes a minor cord.
Speaker 5: And not having a piano, I made a cardboard cutout
Speaker 5: of a keyboard.
Speaker 6: There you go.
Speaker 3: So we're talking Sonny and I and I go, you
Speaker 3: know what, why don't we we have a festive this
Speaker 3: episode coming out? Would you do a fest of a
Speaker 3: song first? And he went, really would you do it?
Speaker 3: And I said, I love, I would love for you
Speaker 3: to do it. Jason was off doing fiddler. Yeah, so
Speaker 3: you did it. I have not heard it. Jason has
Speaker 3: not heard it. So we wanted to present it for
Speaker 3: the first time that do you have petroones so you
Speaker 3: can you know it? Okay, here we go, so if
Speaker 3: you hear me in the control room. Here it is
Speaker 3: the original fest of a song by Sunny and the Blackpack.
Speaker 3: Is it all Black Pack?
Speaker 8: It's featuring Alex Rain, which is a guitarist and and
Speaker 8: he's my one of my bead producers, so me and
Speaker 8: him work together on this project. And everybody really contributed.
Speaker 6: But it's it's really the.
Speaker 3: Name of the song, Peter Till I gave it to
Speaker 3: you and said, do what you want, do what you
Speaker 3: want with the change it your lyric, whatever you want.
Speaker 3: So let's we'll hear we'll hear it, now hear it.
Speaker 3: What's it call?
Speaker 8: By the way, it's unnamed. It's Festus right now.
Speaker 3: I think it's just fest of Us. Is it good name?
Speaker 3: It's jest of Us. Okay, here we go.
Speaker 7: Twice two nights before Christmas, and all throughout our home
Speaker 7: relatives gather together who would rather be alone, children expecting presents,
Speaker 7: but with credit and cash that would parents deep in debt,
Speaker 7: who'd rather used it for gas. That's why there's no
Speaker 7: Monora archere this December twenty third. No tinsel lights or
Speaker 7: carrols to be heard. That's just a simple aluminum all
Speaker 7: bega the fest best Tonight, the nother nomination or knockhomercare
Speaker 7: holiday that ends me? The fight after spagety loof It
Speaker 7: feeds a strength who will win? Then the hearing of grievances.
Speaker 7: Let the insults begin to sagging by, to travel, the traffic,
Speaker 7: stress the fuss, embrace the magic of the holiday.
Speaker 1: That's for the rest of verse festiverse. Festival festival.
Speaker 3: By the way, who starts poem song with twas?
Speaker 7: What festivals?
Speaker 3: Can you use it for? Scramble?
Speaker 5: Does anyone ever say, hey, honey, what last Tuesday that
Speaker 5: we went to your parents for dinner? And what would
Speaker 5: the negatives be?
Speaker 3: Twasn't beautiful?
Speaker 6: Where do we find you?
Speaker 3: In the in the in the gang.
Speaker 8: We're on Instagram, on YouTube, on Spotify, on all streaming platforms.
Speaker 8: You can search Sunning the Black Pack, but our handle
Speaker 8: is Black Media Presents on most places ipic Festivus.
Speaker 3: Everybody, happy holidays and we'll see you in the brand
Speaker 3: of here No Really.
Speaker 4: As another episode if Really Really comes to a close,
Speaker 4: Let's thank our guests, danu Keef. You can follow Dan
Speaker 4: on x at djok Underscore e R, and you can
Speaker 4: find us online at reallynoreally dot com. We're also on Instagram, YouTube, TikTok,
Speaker 4: and threads at really No Really Podcast.
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